To Duplicate or to Replicate, That is the Question

You have a DVD you need more copies of to distribute to a larger audience, but when you go to find out how to achieve this you find that words such as ‘replication’ and ‘duplication’ are being thrown around and you don’t know where to start.

To help, we here at VDC Group have compiled a helpful beginner’s guide to the processes and the pros and cons to help you make a decision, so that you can answer the question: to duplicate or to replicate, which is right for you?

What’s the Difference?

The processes of the duplication and replication are different and this can affect the one you choose. Duplication is similar to burning a CD on a personal computer, it extracts data from the master disk and writes it to a blank disk. Obviously, the big difference from outsourcing to a company and doing this at home is that you are only able to burn one disk at a time, whereas we as a company can have a tower of about a hundred of these discs burning at once in an ongoing process which is much faster and more efficient.

DVD replicates, however, do not have a blank disk to start with; the disks are simply created during the manufacturing process using the client’s master data which is on a glass disk. Replication begins with this flawless master; it is used to create a stamper which is loaded into an injection moulding machine and then creates the replicates. Through each successive step, quality is monitored to ensure a perfect final product.

Pros and Cons of Duplication

Pros:

1. The turnaround is fast, a few days even for huge numbers.

2. Digital full colour available.

Cons:

1. The cost is higher than replication per unit.

2. One layer of information only on the entire DVD.

Pros and Cons of Replication

Pros:

1. Unit costs are lower than duplication.

2. Offset and screen printing are available.

3. These disks can contain multiple layers.

Cons:

1. The turnaround time is longer, sometimes upwards of a week for more units.

2. A minimum order is needed to make this cost effective.

3. The quality hinges on the glass master and if it is flawed the rest of the duplicates will also be flawed.